So this week I finally returned to university. I’ve been attending over the last few months but I’ve simply been auditing a module to keep up with the routine of university and to keep studying. This week has been the start of the work which counts.
I will admit I was nervous. Highly anxious in fact! I’d chosen a subject which I was extremely excited to study, had been enjoying reading both novels and the research but it was a module which involved group work. This would not have been such an ordeal if it wasn’t for the fact that I was with a group of people I didn’t know this time around. Not only this but it was the fact I was returning because I had failed. This had been weighing on my mind a lot. It’s been exciting and enjoyable to be back, which is actually a fantastic sign as I had lost all interested this time last year but it is still frustrating that I have had to come back.
6 months ago it was a heavier burden to deal with. I’ve had ups and downs during my battle with depression and anxiety but never had I dealt with a failure such as that. It was my own and one I had seen coming. One I had dealt with too late. I only had myself to blame, there were no co-conspirators in the situation I had created. A situation such as this when suffering with depression and anxiety can be potentially crippling and feel like a huge set-back. I felt that line of thought looming in the back of my mind.
But I took the situation in hand. Don’t get me wrong, there were tears. A lot of tears. And self-pity, and huge swells of despair and frustration when trying to get more tuition fees sorted or amazing job opportunities appeared that were closed to me because I had not graduated. In the moments I spent figuring out what my situation was, what I could do and organising my next steps it suddenly dawned on me what had just occurred; I had not fallen into the black pit of despair that my heels were precariously close to the edge of. It was not the end like I had envisioned failing at something to be like. And I could have easily fallen. 6 months previous to that moment my depression was at its peak. I had lost all interest in my degree, it felt more of a burden, something which I just wanted to get done and out of the way so I could get on with my despair and long days in bed, forgoing responsibility or care for myself. I knew then that I should have taken time out and returned to my studies once I was in a better place but I just wanted to get it done (as it is, it is almost the situation I have ended up in anyway! But that’s hindsight for you). In those moments when I was figuring out my options, I knew that I was finally on the up and I was finally managing an illness that had been crippling me for years.
When I got the news, I had just broken my foot and I was off sick from work which meant a lot of time to myself. In the past I had struggled with being in my own company and being unable to easily move around or get out of the house… well, getting news that I was also not getting to graduate with my cohorts (thanks to my head of English for getting me hooked on that word) who I had been with for 3 years and being house bound with only myself for company more often than not would have been a recipe for disaster. But it wasn’t. That has bolstered me as I have gone forward from there, certainly in the moments when I do drop and I am struggling to do anything. I know I can do it, I have conquered that seemingly impassable mountain that was my anxiety and depression so I know I can do it again.
A lesson I had not learned up until that moment was how failure can be good for us. Failure was something I had spent my anxious existence being afraid of. It’s why I had never actually tried to obtain my dreams, why my dreams were still dreams. I have a lot of things I could have done, some amazing opportunities but my anxiety has more often than not talked me down: ‘What if you do something wrong? What if you screw up?’. The exception to this is when I took on promotions in my old job and eventually leaving my job to attend university, but these were actions that I felt were padded with a lot of security.
It was this same fear that led me to eventually fail my 3rd year. It’s a paradox in all honesty. My anxiety makes me worry about everything, that I should be doing this, that and the other but it also makes me afraid because I question everything. My depression makes it hard to care, makes me feel hopeless, low, and makes me think what is the point in doing any of it. My anxiety antagonises my depression, my depression stresses my anxiety out (sometimes they agree and I do nothing but most of the time it’s exhausting and probably part of the reason why I am always so inexplicably tired). My depression won over my anxiety (sometimes anxiety can be a blessing as it can prompt needed action) but my anxiety made me increasingly ill as it screamed at me that I needed to do something yet I did not.
I started to come up too late to save me from failing but I did learn a lesson and learned a lot about myself and what I still needed to do in order to move forward. And you know what? It’s OK to screw up. It really is an important way to learn and understand yourself more. I’m lucky that I could see the good in it, see the lessons to be learned from that failure. I know it’s not the same for every situation or every person – indeed, if this had happened earlier as I said, things may not have turned out so positively – that the lessons cannot be learned straight away and need time for healing and recovery. Having experienced this, I know I don’t want it to happen again and I am taking steps to make sure it doesn’t but that is the point of learning from your failures. I also know that if I do drop as low as I did last time, I have this experience to reflect back on and hopefully it will serve as a support, as some kind of reassurance.
I have some awesome things in the pipeline at university now, opportunities that I would not have if I had graduated, opportunities to grow in myself and to help others. It’s exciting times! All because I failed.
The Anxious Extrovert 